Managing resources in virtualization systems

ABSTRACT

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer program products, for managing resources in virtualization systems, including multi-cloud systems. The use of supply chain economics alone and in combination with other techniques offers a unified platform to integrate, optimize or improve, and automate resource management in a virtualization system. These techniques may be used to monitor and control the delivery of service level agreements and software licenses. They may also be used to monitor and control contention of computing resources in a virtualization system, and to suspend or terminate computing resources.

This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No.12/492,890, filed on Jun. 26, 2009, the entire disclosure of which isincorporated herein by reference. Additionally, this Application isrelated to U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 12/540,273, 12/540,293, and12/540,298, each filed on Aug. 12, 2009, and each entitled “ManagingResources in Virtualization Systems”, the entire disclosures of whichare incorporated herein by reference.

BACKGROUND

This specification relates to virtualization systems, and particularlyto managing resources in such systems.

Traditional computer system architectures typically include one or morededicated computer servers for each application being run, and are oftendesigned to include an excessive allocation of resources in order to beable to handle peak demands. Such partitioning of computer systemsthrough dedicated servers and excessive allocation of resources can becostly, inefficient and difficult to scale and manage.

Virtualization, which refers to the abstraction of computer resourcesfrom their hardware or software-based physical constructs, is one mannerof dealing with the aforementioned problems. A virtualization systemincludes one or more virtual machines (VMs), each of which is a softwareimplementation of a computer that executes programs or applications asif it was a physical computer. A virtual machine operates like aphysical computer and contains, for example, its own virtual (e.g.,software-based) central processing unit (CPU), random access memory(RAM), hard disk storage and network interface card (NIC). Each virtualmachine in a virtualization system generally runs its own guestoperating system (OS), and the virtual machines generally share theunderlying physical machine resources of the system.

There are many potential benefits to operating in a virtualizationsystem versus traditional architectures. For example, by permitting thesharing of hardware among applications workloads, virtualization can beused for improving resource utilization and reducing the need for excessresources to absorb peak traffic. Virtualization can also be used toimprove the availability and robustness of applications, by shiftingworkloads among servers to handle fail-over situations. Notwithstandingthe potential benefits, operating in a virtualization system presentsseveral challenges and potential pitfalls, including significantoperations management challenges.

SUMMARY

This specification describes technologies relating to the management ofresources in virtualization systems, including multi-cloud systems.These technologies introduce the use of supply chain economics and othertechniques to offer a unified platform to integrate, optimize orimprove, and automate resource management in a virtualization system.

In general, one aspect of the subject matter described in thisspecification can be embodied in methods that include the actions ofdetermining, by a virtual machine element manager running on a dataprocessor in a virtualization system, a computer resource bundle to bepurchased for the virtual machine using virtual currency units;identifying multiple computer servers in the virtualization systemoffering the computer resource bundle; determining a purchase price forthe computer resource bundle, in virtual currency units, for each of theidentified computer servers; automatically selecting, by the virtualmachine element manager, one of the identified computer servers based atleast in part on the purchase price for the computer resource bundle setfor each of the identified computer servers; and allocating the computerresource bundle from the selected one of the multiple computer serversto the virtual machine. Other embodiments of this aspect includecorresponding systems, apparatus, and computer program products.

Another aspect of the subject matter described in this specification canbe embodied in methods that include the actions of determining, by anelement manager running on a data processor in a first virtualizationsystem, a computer resource bundle to be purchased for a computerelement in the first virtualization system using virtual currency units;receiving, from a proxy manager of a second virtualization systemoffering the computer resource bundle, a purchase price for the computerresource bundle in virtual currency units; automatically purchasing thecomputer resource bundle from the second virtualization system based atleast in part on the purchase price received from the proxy manager ofthe second virtualization system; and allocating the computer resourcebundle from the second virtualization system to the computer element inthe first virtualization system. Other embodiments of this aspectinclude corresponding systems, apparatus, and computer program products.

A further aspect of the subject matter described in this specificationcan be embodied in methods that include the actions of determining, byan element manager running on a data processor in a first virtualizationsystem, a computer resource bundle to be purchased for a computerelement in the first virtualization system using virtual currency units;identifying at least a second virtualization system and a thirdvirtualization system offering the computer resource bundle atrespective purchase prices, in virtual currency units; receiving, fromrespective proxy managers of the second virtualization system and thethird virtualization system, a first purchase price for the computerresource bundle for the second virtualization system and a secondpurchase price for the computer resource bundle for the thirdvirtualization system; automatically selecting one of the secondvirtualization system and the third virtualization system based at leastin part on the respective purchase prices for the computer resourcebundle for the second virtualization system and the third virtualizationsystem; and allocating the computer resource bundle from the selectedone of the second virtualization system and the third virtualizationsystem to the computer element in the first virtualization system. Otherembodiments of this aspect include corresponding systems, apparatus, andcomputer program products.

Still another aspect of the subject matter described in thisspecification can be embodied in methods that include the actions ofallocating a computer resource bundle to an application operating in avirtualization system; determining, by an application element managerrunning on a data processor in the virtualization system, the value of aservice level agreement parameter for the application based on theallocated computer resource bundle; comparing the determined servicelevel agreement parameter level for the application to a thresholdservice level agreement parameter level; automatically modifying theallocation of computer resources to the application depending on whetherthe identified service level agreement parameter level for theapplication is below or above the threshold service level agreementparameter level; and repeating the determining, comparing andautomatically modifying steps until the operation of the application inthe virtualization system is suspended or terminated. Other embodimentsof this aspect include corresponding systems, apparatus, and computerprogram products.

Yet another aspect of the subject matter described in this specificationcan be embodied in methods that include the actions of purchasing acomputer resource bundle, using virtual currency units, for anapplication running on a virtual machine in a virtualization system;allocating the purchased computer resource bundle to the application;determining, by an element manager running on a data processor in thevirtualization system, the value of a service level agreement parameterfor the application; automatically modifying the purchase of thecomputer resource bundle based at least in part on a comparison of thedetermined value of a service level agreement parameter to apredetermined threshold service level agreement parameter level; andrepeating the determining, comparing and automatically modifying stepsuntil the operation of the application in the virtualization system issuspended or terminated. Other embodiments of this aspect includecorresponding systems, apparatus, and computer program products.

Another aspect of the subject matter described in this specification canbe embodied in methods that include the actions of determining, by avirtual machine element manager running on a data processor in avirtualization system, an amount of input/output (I/O) bandwidth to beacquired for the virtual machine; identifying at least a first computerserver and a second computer server in the virtualization system eachoffering at least the determined amount of I/O bandwidth; allocating,from the first computer server, the amount of I/O bandwidth to thevirtual machine; determining the I/O bandwidth utilization of the firstcomputer server; automatically allocating the amount of I/O bandwidth tothe virtual machine, from the second computer server, based at least inpart on the determined I/O bandwidth utilization of the first computerserver. Other embodiments of this aspect include corresponding systems,apparatus, and computer program products.

Yet another aspect of the subject matter described in this specificationcan be embodied in methods that include the actions of determining, by avirtual machine element manager running on a data processor in avirtualization system, an amount of I/O bandwidth to be acquired from afirst computer server for the virtual machine, wherein the virtualmachine in running on the first computer server; allocating, from thefirst computer server, the amount of I/O bandwidth to the virtualmachine for a first period of time; after the first period of time haselapsed, determining that the I/O bandwidth utilization of the firstcomputer server is greater than a threshold limit; automaticallyidentifying at least a second computer server in the virtualizationsystem offering at least the determined amount of storage I/O bandwidthin response to the determined I/O bandwidth utilization of the firstcomputer server; moving the virtual machine from the first computerserver to the identified second computer server; and allocating, fromthe second computer server, the amount of storage I/O bandwidth to thevirtual machine for a second period of time. Other embodiments of thisaspect include corresponding systems, apparatus, and computer programproducts.

Still another aspect of the subject matter described in thisspecification can be embodied in methods that include the actions ofdetermining, by an application element manager running on a dataprocessor in a virtualization system, a software license to be purchasedusing virtual currency units by an application operating in avirtualization system; determining, by a licensing element managerrunning on a data processor in a virtualization system, the number ofcopies of the software licenses available for purchase in thevirtualization system; determining, by the licensing element manager,the purchase price for a copy of the software license; automaticallypurchasing, by the application element manager, a copy of the softwarelicense for the application based at least in part of the determinedpurchase price for a copy of the software license; and allocating thepurchased copy of the software license to the application. Otherembodiments of this aspect include corresponding systems, apparatus, andcomputer program products.

A further aspect of the subject matter described in this specificationcan be embodied in methods that include the actions of allocating, froma computer server in the virtualization system, a computer resourcebundle to a virtual machine operating in the virtualization system;determining, by a virtual machine element manager running on a dataprocessor in the virtualization system, a productivity score of thevirtual machine; determining that the productivity level of the virtualmachine is below a threshold productivity level; and automaticallyinitiating, by the virtual machine element manager, at least one of asuspension sequence and a termination sequence for the virtual machinebased at least in part on the determination that the productivity levelof the virtual machine is below a threshold level. Other embodiments ofthis aspect include corresponding systems, apparatus, and computerprogram products.

Another aspect of the subject matter described in this specification canbe embodied in methods that include the actions of allocating a computerresource bundle to a computer server operating in the virtualizationsystem; determining, by a computer server element manager running on adata processor in the virtualization system, a productivity score of thecomputer server; determining that the productivity level of the computerserver is below a threshold productivity level; and automaticallyinitiating, by the computer server element manager, at least one of asuspension sequence and a termination sequence for the computer serverbased at least in part on the determination that the productivity levelof the computer server is below a threshold level. Other embodiments ofthis aspect include corresponding systems, apparatus, and computerprogram products.

These and other embodiments can optionally include one or more of thefollowing features. Virtual currency units are used to control thepurchase of computer resources. Computer resources are allocated only ifa budget of the acquiring computer element is sufficient. The allocationof computer resources is in exchange for the payment of virtual currencyunits. Virtual currency units are converted into real currency, such asUnited Stated dollars, or euros. A performance metric of an applicationexecuting on a virtual machine is determined, and the allocation ofcomputer resources is based on such performance metric. A performancemetric of an application executing on a virtual machine is determined,and the allocation of virtual currency units to the application or thevirtual machine is based on such performance metric. The computerresources to be allocated include at least one of an allotment ofcomputer memory, an allotment of program execution scheduling for one ormore central processing units, an allotment of storage interfacebandwidth, an allotment of network interface bandwidth, and an allotmentof a storage array. A computer resource provider is selected based onthe price offered for the computer resources. The price offered for thecomputer resources is determined by an auction process. The amount ofcomputer resources purchased is dependent on a computed computerresource utilization. A proxy manager of a second virtualizationcomputer system controls the allocation of computer resources to a firstvirtualization computer system. These features are optional and notexhaustive, and they may be separately realized or realized in variouscombinations.

Moreover, particular embodiments of the subject matter described in thisspecification can be implemented to realize one or more of the followingadvantages. Computing resources may be monitored and managed invirtualization systems based on economic and non-economic principles,both in single-cloud and multi-cloud systems. Such management ofresources may be used to control the delivery of service levelagreements, and the distribution of software licenses, in virtualizationsystems. They may also be used to suspend or terminate computingresources in virtualization systems. These advantages and features areoptional and not exhaustive, and they may be separately realized orrealized in various combinations.

The details of one or more embodiments of the subject matter describedin this specification are set forth in the accompanying drawings and thedescription below. Other features, aspects, and advantages of thesubject matter will become apparent from the description, the drawings,and the claims.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an example virtualization environment inwhich resources are managed.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of an example software system for managingresources in a virtualization system.

FIG. 3 is a flow diagram of an example process for using a platformmanager in a virtualization system.

FIG. 4 is an example model for service provision and consumption in asupply chain virtualization system.

FIG. 5 is a flow diagram of an example process for deploying a newconsumer element with a provider element in a virtualization system.

FIG. 6 is a flow diagram of an example process for delivering servicelevel agreement targets through resource allocation in a virtualizationsystem.

FIG. 7 is a flow diagram of an example process for economic-based I/Oscheduling in a virtualization system.

FIG. 8A is an example purchase order data structure for use inpurchasing services from a provider element manager in a virtualizationsystem.

FIG. 8B is an example service confirmation data structure for use inconfirming or rejecting the purchase of services from a provider elementmanager in a virtualization system.

FIG. 9 is an example process for managing the states of system elementsin a virtualization system.

FIG. 10 is a block diagram of an example multi-domain software systemenvironment for managing virtualized resources.

Like reference numbers and designations in the various drawings indicatelike elements.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an example virtualization environment 100in which resources are managed. The example environment 100 includingtwo physical servers 102 and 104 that are virtualized, resulting inmultiple logical servers. The virtualization of the resources of theservers 102 and 104 is provided by respective virtual machine monitors,or hypervisors 106 and 108. As used herein, the term “hypervisor” refersto virtualization software that allows multiple operating systems to runon a single host computer concurrently. There are multiple types ofhypervisors that may be used according to various embodiments, includingnative hypervisors, which are software systems that run directly on thehost server's hardware as a hardware control and guest operating systemmonitor. Thus, with native hypervisors, the guest operating system runson another level above the hypervisor. Native hypervisors are alsocommonly referred to as “bare-metal” or “Type 1” hypervisors. Anothertype of hypervisor includes hosted hypervisors, which are softwareapplications running within a conventional operating system environment.With hosted hypervisors, considering the hypervisor layer as being adistinct software layer, the guest operating system runs at the thirdlevel above the hardware. Hosted hypervisors are also commonly referredto as “Type 2” hypervisors.

In the example embodiment shown in FIG. 1, the hypervisor 106 at theserver 102 serves as an intermediary software layer and allocates thisserver's resources between a first virtual machine 110 and a secondvirtual machine 112. For example, the hypervisor 106 schedules the CPUsand memory of the server 102 to process the virtual machines 110 and112. Similarly, the hypervisor 108 at the server 104 allocates thisserver's resources between its first virtual machine 114 and its secondvirtual machine 116.

As also shown in FIG. 1, the virtual machines 110, 112, 114 and 116 runthe respective guest operating systems 120, 122, 124 and 126. Forexample, these operating systems may include one or more instances ofMac OS, Microsoft Windows, Linux, BSD or Solaris. The guest operatingsystems 120, 122, 124 and 126 execute respective applications 130, 132,134 and 136. For example, the application 130 may be a human resources(HR) application, the application 132 may be a sales application, theapplication 134 may be a customer relationships management (CRM)application, and the application 136 may be a marketing application. Theprinciples described herein may be applied regardless of the particularapplication or applications being run in the virtualization system.

The hypervisors 106 and 108 are also used in allocating storage andnetwork input/output (I/O) pathways to their respective virtual machines110, 112 and 114, 116. For example, considering first the server 102,the hypervisor 106 of the server 102 may virtualize a physical I/Oadapter 140 into multiple virtual I/O adapters 142 and 144, which maythen be respectively assigned to the virtual machines 110 and 112 andmay act as proxy emulators of the physical adapter 140. For example, thephysical I/O adapter 140 may be a Fiber Channel (FC) or Internet SCSIprotocol (iSCSI) Host Bus Adapter (HBA), whereas the virtual I/Oadapters 142 and 144 may be virtual HBAs. Alternatively, for example,the physical I/O adapter 140 may be an InfiniBand host channel adapter(HCA) or an Ethernet NIC, whereas the virtual adapters 142 and 144 maybe virtual HCAs or NICs, respectively. The virtual I/O adapters 142 and144 are enabled with the same set of resources, such as network orlogical unit number (LUN) addressing, as are available in the physicaladapter 140.

To enable communication between the virtual machines 110 and 112 and thesteering of traffic between the physical adapter 140 and the virtual I/Oadapters 142 and 144, the hypervisor 106 implements a shared-memorysoftware switch, or virtual switch 146. In some software implementationsof hypervisor 106, the virtual switch 146 also acts as a layer uponwhich some or all virtual infrastructure management functions may beimplemented.

The hypervisor 106 shown in FIG. 1 also virtualizes a physical I/Oadapter driver 150 into multiple virtual I/O adapter drivers 152 and154. The virtual drivers 152 and 154 direct the respective I/O flows toand from the virtual I/O adapter 142 and 144, respectively, whichforward the traffic to and from the physical adapter 140. The physicalI/O adapter 140 forwards traffic through the external network switch 156or 158 to and from the respective storage array 160 or 162.

Similarly, with respect to the second server 104, hypervisor 108 mayvirtualize a physical I/O adapter 170 into multiple virtual I/O adapters172 and 174, which may be respectively assigned to the virtual machines114 and 116. The hypervisor 108 implements a virtual switch 176, andalso virtualizes a physical I/O adapter driver 180 into multiple virtualI/O adapter drivers 182 and 184. The physical I/O adapter 170 forwardstraffic through the external network switch 156 or 158 to and from therespective storage array 160 or 162.

The aforementioned I/O pathways may be used to enable virtual machineaccess to various types of external storage and networks. For example,the switch 156 may be used for connecting the virtual machines 110, 112,114 and 116 to a storage area network (SAN), in which case the physicalI/O adapter 140 or 170 would be an HBA and switch 156 would be a SANswitch. SANs provide block-level access to a storage array (such asstorage array 160) using a storage access protocol, such as FC or iSCSIas mentioned above. Additionally, for example, the switch 158 may be aused for connecting the virtual machines 110, 112, 114 and 116 through alocal area network (LAN) to Network Attached Storage (NAS), whichprovides file-level access over the LAN using a file server protocolsuch as the Network File Serve (NFS) protocol, or the Common InternetFile Server (CIFS) protocol. In that case, the physical I/O adapter 140or 170 would be a NIC and switch 158 would be a LAN switch.

Although a specific environment 100 including the two servers 102 and104 is shown in FIG. 1 and described above, it will be understood thatthis environment 100 is illustrative only. For example, although FIG. 1shows only one application for each of the virtual machines 110, 112,114 and 116, it is possible for any of these virtual machines to berunning more than one application. Additionally, for example, theenvironment 100 may include more than two servers, and each of theservers 102 and 104 may be associated with more or less than two virtualmachines as shown.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of an example software system 200 for managingresources in virtualization systems. The software system 200 may be usedto allocate server and I/O resources (such as CPU, memory and I/Obandwidth) to virtual machines. The software system 200 may also beused, for example, to monitor, detect and handle congestion conditionsalong I/O pathways, and to move virtual machines among available serversto optimize or improve application performance and utilization.

The software system 200 monitors, controls and otherwise interacts withvarious managed virtualization system elements (also referred to hereinas service elements or computer elements) through respectiveinstrumentation. It will be understood that, as used herein in thecontext of computers, the term “instrumentation” refers generally to anysoftware and/or hardware that provides an ability to monitor, control orotherwise interact with a computer element, such as to diagnose errorsand write trace information. For example, when a computer applicationcontains instrumentation code, it may be managed using a managementtool.

Several example virtualization system elements are shown in FIG. 2 aspart of Information Technology (IT) Virtualization Stack (ITVS) 202,including applications components 210, virtual machines and hypervisors212, servers 214, storage systems 216, networks 218 and operatingresources 220 (such as power supplies, cooling systems and space). Insome embodiments, the ITVS 202 may include, for example, a proper subsetor a proper superset of these virtualization system elements 210, 212,214, 216, 218 and 220.

As shown, the software system 200 includes a platform layer 230, whichprovides an infrastructure to manage, for example, the I/O flows in avirtualization system (such as the example virtualization environment100 shown in FIG. 1). The platform layer 230 includes element managers234, 236, 238, 240, 242 and 244. More particularly, the platform layer230 includes an application manager 234, a virtual machine andhypervisor manager 236, a server manager 238, a storage manager 240, anetwork manager 242, and an operations manager 244. These elementmanagers 234, 236, 238, 240, 242 and 244 use management instrumentationof respective elements to monitor and control the respective elements ofITVS 202. For example, the server manager 238 may use built-inmanagement instrumentation, such as Management Information Bases (MIBs)of the server it is managing, to monitor the server's CPU, memory andI/O interfaces (such as HBAs and NICs), and to control their operationalparameters. The server manager 238 may access such managementinstrumentation using standardized protocols (such as Simple NetworkManagement Protocol (SNMP)), or specialized mechanisms. In someembodiments, a proper superset or only a proper subset of these elementmanagers 234, 236, 238, 240, 242 and 244 may be desired or needed incertain environments. For example, when each virtual machine in avirtualization system is dedicated to a single application, the use ofan application manager 234 may not be desired or needed. Additionally,for example, an operating system element manager (not shown) may beincluded as part of platform layer 230.

As also shown, the platform layer 230 also includes one or more types ofmodeling databases. As discussed in more detail below, these databasesmay include supply chain modeling (SCM) databases 246 and operationsdatabases 248 as described below. The platform layer 230 also includes aplatform manager 250, which as explained in greater detail below, isresponsible for general provisioning, initializing and management tasks.

The software system 200 shown in FIG. 2 also includes a functionalmanagement layer 252, which includes user interface (UI) software 260for use by administrators or other users to monitor and control avirtualization system (such as the example virtualization environment100 shown in FIG. 1). For example, an administrator may use UI software260 to set proactive automation policies to optimize or improveperformance and resource utilization, detect and resolve operationalproblems and performance bottlenecks, allocate priorities and usagecharges to different applications, and plan capacity expansions.

The functional management layer 252 also includes a collection offunctional managers 272, 274, 276 and 278, which are used to enableusers to monitor, control and automate the underlying automatedmanagement mechanisms of virtualization systems according to theprinciples described herein. The software system 200 may alternativelyinclude, for example, a proper subset or a proper superset of thesefunctional managers.

As shown in FIG. 2, the functional management layer 252 includes anapplications manager 272, which, for example, enables users to select orconfigure respective parameters in connection with which a computeragent or process partitions applications components among differentvirtual machines, allocates virtual budgets to applications based on thebusiness value of their services, as described in greater detail below,and specifies the resources required by applications. The applicationmanager 272 uses these user-selected parameters to create respectiverecords in the operational databases 248. The platform manager 250 usesthese operational records to initialize respective application elementmanagers 234, which use these records to deploy the applications 210,according to the principles described below. Additional functions ofmonitoring and controlling applications may be incorporated into theapplications manager 272.

The performance manager 274 is used by users to monitor and control thedelivery of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to applications. Forexample, a user of the software system 200 can specify target SLAparameters of one or more particular applications. These specificationsare used by the software system 200 to tune the performance of theapplications using the principles described below. A user can alsomonitor the SLA parameters value, as well as the respective virtualpayments made by an application, thereby correlating the application'sbudget with its SLA performance. Additional functions of monitoring andcontrolling the performance of applications, as well as the otherelements of the ITVS 202, may be incorporated into the performancemanager 274.

The capacity manager 276 monitors relationships between the supply anddemand of resources in the ITVS 202. For example, the capacity manager276 may monitor such relationships over periods of time that may rangefrom short term (such as a few minutes or one hour) to long term (suchas one day, week, month or year). The capacity manager 276 may maintainfull accounting of revenues and costs and provide monitoring of theseaccounts and notifications upon certain accounting events. The capacitymanager, by itself or with the assistance of an incorporated or separateReturn-on-Investment (ROI) manager, enables a user to monitor the ROI ofthe elements in the ITVS 202. ROI is defined as revenues divided bycosts, where revenue is the income from virtual payment collected by theelement and cost is the virtual payments by the element for theresources it uses. For example, a large ROI may indicate to the capacitymanager 276 that there is excess demand over supply of the elementcapacity, and sustained high ROI may thus indicate insufficientcapacity. The capacity manager 276 may compare a monitored ROI withspecific and potentially predetermined ROI targets, which may beconfigured by an administrator or other user, to recommend capacityincreases of particular elements to meet demand. According to the supplychain economic principles described below, the ROI of an element in theITVS 202 may be considered as a central metric of economic value.

ROI may be calculated at any appropriate time and for any appropriateduration over which revenue and cost are considered. Thus, theprinciples described herein provide an accounting framework to quantifyand measure the value generated by components of the ITVS 202. Forexample, at the bottom of the ITVS 202, there are raw resources thatgenerate real (non-virtual) costs, such as monetary costs that are paidto an electric company. At the top of the ITVS 202, there areapplications that play roles in generating real (non-virtual) revenues,such as monetary sales revenue received from customers. It is possibleto treat one or more of the system elements 210, 212, 214, 216, 218 and220 as virtual P&L (Profit and Loss) entities, generating revenuesthrough payments by its consumers, and paying the costs of services itconsumes. Through the use of virtual currency pricing and payments asdescribed herein to distribute a share of these revenues to cover costs,it is possible to increase efficiency and overall ROI of the entiresystem.

The back-charging manager 278 monitors and accounts for the virtual cashflows between elements in the ITVS 202 and enables users to flexiblycompute financial metrics of interest. For example, users can monitormetrics describing the allocation of applications budgets to acquiresupply chain resources, the allocation of a resource among the workloadsof different applications, the ROI efficiency of different resources,and application budgets required to deliver particular SLAs. These andother parameters may be used to support policies on budgetingapplications, tuning the budgets to represent changing prices, capacityand demand of resources along the supply chain, and converting virtualcurrency used within the software system 200 to real currency (such asUnited States dollars, or euros) that is generated by the business unitswho own the applications and that may be used to pay for IT resources.

FIG. 3 is a flow diagram of an example process 300 for using theabove-described platform manager 250 in a virtualization system. Theplatform manager 250 initializes, or launches, the functional managers272, 274, 276 and 278 of functional management layer 252 to be used by aspecific virtualization environment (302). The platform manager 250discovers the managed virtualization system elements of the ITVS 202 inthe virtualization environment (304). This discovery is generallyhandled through standard processes to get configuration data from theexisting hypervisors, network and storage equipment.

The platform manager 250 also initializes, or launches, an elementmanager (such as one or more of element managers 234, 236, 238, 240, 242and 244 described above) for each group of respective elements of agiven class of elements that have been discovered (306). For example,the discovery may detect a Dell server and a SUN server, and thecorresponding groups of respective elements may both be assignedrespective element managers. The platform manager 250 configures theelement managers to monitor and control the respective elements viarespective management instrumentation.

The platform manager 250 populates and initializes the platform modelingdatabases 245, including supply chain modeling databases 246 andoperational databases 248 (308), and starts monitoring certain potentialchanges of the managed environment (310). For example, the presence ofvirtual machines is evaluated to determine if there have been anyvirtual machine changes, such as any added, deleted or migrated virtualmachines (312). If a virtual machine change has been detected, theplatform manager 250 again initializes the element managers as describedabove.

If no virtual machine changes have been detected, the presence ofhypervisors is evaluated to determine if there have been any hypervisorchanges, such as any added or deleted hypervisors (314). If a hypervisorchange has been detected, the platform manager 250 again discovers themanaged virtualization system elements of the ITVS 202 in thevirtualization environment as described above. Otherwise, the platformmanager 250 evaluates whether there have been any major network changes(316), in which case the platform manager 250 similarly re-discovers themanaged virtualization system elements of the ITVS 202 in thevirtualization environment as described above. Otherwise, the platformmanager 250 evaluates whether there have been any major storage changes(318). If major storage changes have been detected, the platform manager250 again discovers the managed virtualization system elements of theITVS 202 in the virtualization environment as described above.

If no virtual machine, hypervisor, network or storage changes have beendetected, the platform manager 250 determines whether to continuemonitoring of the same (320). If it decides to continue monitoring, theplatform manager 250 again starts the monitoring of potential changes ofthe managed environment. Otherwise, the process 300 ends (322).

The order of steps in the example process 300 described above isillustrative only, and can be done in different orders. For example, theplatform manager 250 may evaluate whether there have been any majorstorage changes (318) before determining whether there has been anymajor network changes (316). Moreover, additional steps may be included,for example, to protect the software system 200 against its ownfailures. Such additional steps may include, for example, insertingbetween steps 308 and 310 described above the steps (not shown) ofcreating a mirror and backup copies of the platform image (includingdatabases 246 and 248), running a second instance of the software system200 in standby mode and monitoring the primary instance of the softwaresystem 200, and switching to the standby instance of the software system200 upon detecting the failure of the first instance of the softwaresystem 200.

According to various embodiments, the software system 200 describedabove operates using a supply chain software model of the ITVS 202 thatit manages. In other words, each virtualization system element of theITVS 202 is modeled as a provider and a consumer of services. Forexample, FIG. 4 is an example model 400 for service provision andconsumption in a supply chain virtualization environment. As shown inFIG. 4, which includes references to the virtualization system elementsof the ITVS 202 shown in FIG. 2, the server 214 may consume services ofthe operating resources 220, including power 402, cooling 404, physicalspace 406, a share of capital expenditure (CAPEX) costs 408 and a shareof operating expenditure (OPEX) costs 410, as well as the resources ofnetworks 218, including LAN 420 and SAN 422. The server 214, however,may provide the virtual machines and hypervisors 212 with variousphysical resource services, including CPU bandwidth 430, memory 432,network I/O bandwidth 434 and storage I/O bandwidth 436. As also shown,the virtual machines and hypervisors 212 may also consume storageresources 438 from the storage element 216, and in turn, may offerservices (such as services 440 and 442) to the application 210. Theapplication 210, on the other hand, may offer services to respectivebusiness activities of one or more business units 450.

According to various embodiments, the allocation of resources and theprocessing of workloads through the supply chain, as described above,may be performed through the use of virtual currency. In these cases,supply chain elements use virtual currency to pay for the services theyconsume and to price the services they offer. For example, anapplication 210 may receive a budget, from its business users reflectingthe business value of the services that it offers. The application 210may shop for a virtual machine 212 that offers the lowest pricedprocessing services it requires, and may use its virtual budget to payfor these services. The virtual machine 212, in turn, may use its incomeof virtual currency to pay for the services offered by the server 214and the storage system 216. Each of the virtualization systems elementsof the ITVS 202 may price their services in virtual currency to reflecttheir costs, and additionally, or in the alternative, to balance supplyand demand.

The supply chain model of the ITVS 202 is primarily maintained by thesupply chain model databases 246 shown in FIG. 2. According to variousembodiments, supply chain model databases 246 may include one or morefinancial databases to debit and credit the respective accounts ofcustomers and providers to reflect the transfer of virtual payments, asdiscussed in greater detail below. It will be understood, however, thatnon-monetary transactions may be entered into between a consumer and aprovider.

The supply chain model databases 246 may be object-relationshipdatabases, such that elements of the supply chain are modeled as objectscorresponding to services to be offered. As used herein, the term“objects” refers to data structures including data fields and methods.Two types of service objects maybe include simple and composite serviceobjects.

According to various embodiments, simple service objects, or objectsrelating to the provision of a single type of service, may include thefollowing types of attributes:

<service-identifier, units, used, available, duration, price( )>.

The “service-identifier” attribute may itself include the followingtypes of attributes as descriptors of the service that may be used for aparticular class of services: <name, type, description, elementmanager>. For example, a CPU service provided by a Dell server with anIntel iQ9550 processor managed by element manager ServerEM015 may beassigned the following identifier: <Dell4, CPU, iQ9550, ServerEM015>.

The “units” attribute may measure the quantity of service, such as 5 Mhz(CPU), 2 GB (memory) or 10 Mbps (net I/O).

The “used” attribute may refer to the amount of the service or resourcecapacity that is already committed.

The “available” attribute may refer to the amount that remains to meetnew demands.

The “duration” attribute may indicated the period of time over whichservice is to be rendered.

The “price(demand)” attribute may refer to a method whose input is thedemand by a service consumer, for a number of service units it requires,which computes the price in virtual currency units, as set by theservice provider. For example, the simple service object <<Dell4, CPU,iQ9550, ServerEM015>, 0.1 Ghz, 0.8 Ghz, 2 Ghz, 1 hr, price(x)>, whereprice(x)=1/(2−0.1x)², may be used to describe a CPU service named Dell4,providing an Intel processor of type Q9550 for one hour in units of 0.1Ghz. In this case, a request for 0.5 Ghz (5 units) of this CPU servicewill be priced at price(5)=1/2.25=$0.44 per one hour of use.

According to various embodiments, the pricing functions used by simpleservice objects can be flexibly adapted by element managers to reflectdifferent pricing goals and mechanisms. For example, a server may beshared by 4-20 virtual machines, which preferably utilize no more than50% of its capacity to avoid congestion. In this case, the percentage ofaverage demand to capacity of a given server resource preferably fallsbetween 2.5%-12.5%.

Consider a commodity service, defined as one where this ratio is verysmall. With supply far exceeding demand, prices will drop to reflectcosts. Thus, a commodity service may be priced at fixed cost-basedprice. For example, suppose the percentage of average demand to capacityfor CPU usage by a virtual machines is 2%. In such a scenario, theshifting of a virtual machine among servers would have negligible impacton the quality of CPU services seen by the virtual machines. CPUs cantherefore be priced at a fixed level to merely reflect the costs ofproviding CPUs. In general, a commodity service may be priced at a fixedlevel, independently of demand. However, when the ratio of averagedemand to capacity is sufficiently large, arriving demands may easilydeplete the supply absent pricing control, thus requiring higher pricesto balance the supply and demand.

A sample pricing function that provides such pricing control is:price[x]=cost/(1−(U+x)/C)⁴

where

C=capacity of the resource;

U=amount of resource used; and

x=new demand.

Such a pricing function is proportional to costs, penalizing highutilization. When the utilization u=(U+x)/C approaches its limit of one,prices increase rapidly, preventing all but the highest budgetapplications from accessing the resource. For example, suppose virtualmachines require, on average, 2% of the CPU capacity of servers, but 20%of their storage I/O capacity. In this scenario, a virtual machinewanting to deploy with a server supporting three virtual machines willsee the following CPU and storage I/O prices:price_(CPU)[0.02C]=cost_(CPU)/(1−0.08C/C)⁴=cost_(CPU)/0.92⁴=1.4*cost_(CPU)price_(I/O)[0.2C]=cost_(I/O)/(1−0.8C/C)⁴=cost_(I/O)/0.2⁴=625*cost_(I/O).Thus, in the above-described scenario, CPU is priced at a relativelysmall multiplier of the cost base of CPU, while the storage I/O ispriced at a relatively large multiplier of the cost base of I/O.Although specific pricing considerations and mechanisms have beendescribed, a large variety of pricing functions may be used according toother embodiments to best reflect specific use considerations.

Composite service objects, which are objects that include more than oneservice object and which relate to the provision of multiple types ofservices, may take the following form according to various embodiments:

<service-identifier, service-1, service-2 . . . , service-n>,

where service-k is either a simple or composite service object and isreferred to as a component of the composite service. In someembodiments, the “duration” attributes of all components of a compositeservice are identical, and their common value is called the duration ofthe composite service. For example, a hardware server may be describedby the following composite service object:

<<server-1, Server, LS41>, CPU4, Memory-2, NIC-3, NIC-4, HBA-2>

where Memory-2, NIC-3, NIC-4 and HBA-2 indicate respective simpleservice objects associated with respective memory services,LAN-interface services provided by two NICs, and SAN I/O servicesprovided by HBA-2. The HBA-2 may itself be described by a simple serviceobject as follows:<<HBA-2, FC-HBA, Emulex, LP11000-M4>, 0.1 Gbps, 1.1 Gbps, 2.9 Gbps, 1hr, price(x)>.

This service object indicates that the duration of the composite serviceis one hour, as the durations of all components of a composite serviceare identical.

In some embodiments, the price of a composite service is defined as thesum of the prices of all its components. For example, the price of aserver object is the sum of the prices of the units of CPU, memory,network I/O and storage I/O required by a consumer.

The supply chain model databases 246 are maintained by element managers(such as element managers 234, 236, 238, 240, 242 and 244 shown in FIG.2), which handle the service objects corresponding to the respectiveelements that they manage. As explained above with respect to the sampleprocess 300 shown in FIG. 3, according to various embodiments, anelement manager is initialized by the platform manager 250, andsubsequently the element manager proceeds to populate the supply chainmodel databases 246 with respective service objects it is responsiblefor. Once the supply chain model databases 246 have been updated, theelement manager continues to update the dynamic attributes of itsrespective service objects (such as the “used” and “available”attributes). For example, a server manager 238 that is responsible formanaging HBA resources will initialize the supply chain model databases246 with corresponding simple service objects relating to the HBA. Theserver manager 238 will then monitor and update the “used” and“available” attributes of this simple service object by periodicallyaccessing the HBA instrumentation.

As mentioned above, the supply chain economy matches consumers andproviders of resources or services by using pricing and budgeting.According to various embodiments, demand for services is matched tosupply through a shopping model. A consumer element manager (such as oneof element managers 234, 236, 238, 240, 242 and 244 shown in FIG. 2),desiring services from a provider element manager, queries the supplychain model databases 246 in search of the best priced provider orproviders of the desired services. The query specifies requirements andthe service or services the element manager is requesting. For example,a query may take the following form:

Query: Server, CPU.units=50 Mhz, Memory.units=4 GB, StorageIO.units=200Mbps, NetworkIO.units=100 Mbps.

Such a query may retrieve records of composite service objects of theservers 214 offering the respective CPU, memory, storage I/O and networkI/O capacity at the lowest price. Once the consumer element manageracquires these records of lowest-priced service objects, it can proceedto extract the identities of the element managers posting these serviceofferings. The consumer element manager may then pursue directinteractions and contract with one or more respective provider elementmanagers to acquire and pay for the desired services. There exists thepossibility that multiple consumers may query the supply chain modeldatabases 246 simultaneously for similar services, and thus potentiallyinterfere with each other's shopping processes. Such interference may beavoided, for example, by providing standard locking mechanisms tomaintain atomicity of the query and purchase transactions.

Moreover, various embodiments may use an auction, or bidding model,rather than a shopping model, to match demand and supply. For example,consumer element managers may post respective bids for services in abidding database, which a provider element manager may then query forthe highest bid price offered for its services and contract to serve it.The shopping model is generally preferred to bidding in situations whereconsumers' demands arrive asynchronously and unpredictably. In suchcases, an arriving consumer can find the low-cost provider by searchingthe supply chain model databases 246. In contrast, a bidding processrequires providers to poll, whether constantly or at intervals, thebidding database to detect arrivals of new bids, while bidding consumersmay be required to wait until enough providers have polled the biddingdatabase and accepted the bids, and thus contract with providers basedat least in part on chance. There are various situations where biddingmay offer benefits over shopping, and those situations may be handledusing the principles described herein.

FIG. 5 is a flow diagram of an example process 500 for deploying a newconsumer element (such as a virtual machine) with a provider element(such as a server) in a virtualization system that is used according tovarious embodiments for balancing the demand and supply of services. Thedynamic load balancing approach illustrated by example process 500provides an effective solution to several of the resource managementproblems described above. For example, process 500 may be used toimprove the balancing of demands by virtual machines and the supply ofserver resources; it may also be used to balance the resource bundleallocated to a virtual machine, e.g., to match the amount of CPU, memoryand storage I/O bandwidth allocated to the virtual machine, in order toimprove the use of its virtual budget to best service its resourcedemands.

As shown in FIG. 5, once the relevant consumer element managers andprovider element managers are running, having been initiated by theplatform manager 250, a consumer element manager shops for lowest costprovider for a bundle of services by querying the supply chain modeldatabases 246 as described above (502), and contacts the providerelement manager to buy services (504). In the case of a virtual machineconsumer, for example, the bundle of services to be purchased mayinclude CPU, memory and storage I/O.

The provider element manager determines whether the consumer budget issufficient to pay the price for the requested provider services (506).If it is determined that there is sufficient budget, the providerelement manager deploys the consumer at the provider, which proceeds toprocess its workload (508). For example, CPU and memory resources thathave been purchased may be allocated to a virtual machine by theunderlying scheduler of the hypervisor, which may include the use of atraditional operating systems scheduling algorithm. The server elementmanager configures the scheduler parameters to accomplish fairlyaccurate allocation of the CPU and memory. Memory may be allocated byspecifying an amount of memory to be provided. The hypervisor canallocate physical memory, based on these specifications, or supportvirtual memory mechanisms that permit over 100% utilization of physicalmemory. Additionally, the CPU may be allocated by configuringreservations and shares parameters of the scheduler. For example,reservations may be used to allocate a reserved CPU slice, using atime-shared round-robin scheduler, while shares allocate the remainingCPU bandwidth through a Weighted Fair Queuing scheduler. CPUreservations and shares may be viewed as separate services, and may beindividually priced according to supply and demand. For example, alow-priority application may be unable to buy reservations, and may thusneed to settle for shares, which may be priced lower. A high-priority,mission-critical application, on the other hand, may have sufficientbudget to afford sufficient reservations to support its needs.

Otherwise, if it is determined that there is not sufficient budget, theconsumer element manager initiates a credit check process to decidewhether the consumer can increase its budget or sufficiently lower itsservice demands, and thus continue to run (510). For example, supposethe consumer is a virtual machine whose budget is short of paying thecost of a provider server. In that case, the virtual machine may usecredit it has accumulated to pay for the service, obtain additionalbudget from the applications it serves, or reduce its demand forservices and the corresponding price to the point where it can afford topay. If one or more of these scenarios is possible, the consumer usescredit, increases its budget and/or lowers its service demands (512),and the provider element manager thus deploys the consumer at theprovider as described above. Otherwise, if none of these options isavailable, the consumer is suspended and then will either terminate orre-launch when adequate budget becomes available to it (514), asdescribed in greater detail below.

After the provider element manager deploys the consumer at the provider,the provider element manager or the consumer element manager monitorsconsumer resource usage and adjusts allocation of resources to optimizeor improve the use of the consumer's budget (516). For example, theprovider element manager may find that the consumer is using only 20% ofone service it bought, while using 90% of another service it bought. Inthat case, the provider element manager may reduce the allocation of thefirst service and use the corresponding released budget to increase theallocation of the second resource.

Upon completion or termination of the consumer service period, theprovider element manager notifies the consumer element manager (518),which may proceed to shop for a new provider offering lowest costservices to meet the consumer's needs (520). The consumer elementmanager determines whether the price of the new provider found is lowerthan the price of the old provider (where the consumer resides at thetime), or according to some embodiments, whether it is lower by athreshold amount (522). Assuming it is, the consumer element managermoves the consumer to the new provider, in which case it may also adjustthe budget to reflect the price of moving, if any (524). Namely,according to various embodiments, a price of moving may be factored intothe decision making process for whether the consumer should be moved tothe new provider, and such price may be subtracted or deducted from theavailable budget. Otherwise, if the consumer element manager decides tokeep the consumer with the old provider, it does not adjust the budgetto reflect the price of moving. In either case, the provider elementmanager (of the new or old provider) checks to see if the consumerbudget is sufficient to pay for the provider as described above.

The order of steps in the example process 500 described above isillustrative only, and can be done in different orders. Moreover, it iscontemplated that modifications and extensions of the process 500 willbe used according to various embodiments. For example, a consumer mayneed to contract with two or more providers to be deployed, as in thecase of a virtual machine that needs to acquire a bundle of resourcesoffered by a server as well as SAN switch bandwidth and storage space ata storage array. In such scenarios, deployment of the consumer can besupported by extending step 502 to shop for multiple providers and thenrepeating the remaining steps for each of these providers. Additionally,for example, as explained below with respect to FIG. 6, the exampleprocess 500 shown in FIG. 5 may be modified or extended to enable theadjustment of resource allocations to obtain desired service levelagreements (SLAs).

According to various embodiments, the above-described supply chaineconomic principles may also be used to manage software licenses, suchas temporary (time-limited) software licenses. For example, regardlessof type (such as authorizations of software use per user, per CPU, perserver or per virtual machine), licenses may be modeled as resources tobe purchased by an application manager 234, much like other resourcesthat it may purchase from a virtual machine 212. License elementmanagers (which, while not shown, may be included as part of platformlayer 230) may be used to set the prices of the licenses based on costsand demands. In this manner, license management may be greatlysimplified and unified with the allocation of other types of resources.For example, an application that is unable to acquire a needed licensemay suspend its operations and release its resources, as explainedbelow, thus increasing the overall efficiency of the system.Additionally, licenses may be more efficiently used, since in situationswhere the licenses are highly utilized, they will be allocated to highpriority tasks, while lower priority tasks may be suspended until theycan afford the licenses. As soon as a license is no longer needed, itmay be released and available for other tasks. Additionally, anadministrator may consider the ROI of licenses, as with other resources,to plan the expansion, or contraction, of licenses capacity. Forexample, if a license's ROI is above a certain threshold, it may bedesirable to acquire more licenses to increase the supply to meetdemand.

FIG. 6 is a flow diagram of an example process 600 for deliveringservice level agreement targets through resource allocation in avirtualization system, which includes many of the steps of process 500shown in FIG. 5 and discussed above. Although not required, for thepurpose of simplifying the following description, it is assumed that thetarget service level agreement relates to an application running on avirtual machine. However, the service level of other types of computerelements may be controlled in the following manner according to variousembodiments.

Following the initial monitoring of resource utilization and optimizingof the virtual machine's budget (516), it is determined whether theconsumer service period has terminated (602), in which case the providerelement manager notifies the virtual machine element manager (518) asdescribed above. Otherwise, the virtual machine element manager monitorsand obtains the value of the SLA parameter of interest, such as theaverage transaction rate of an application, or the number oftransactions performed within a predetermined prior time period by anapplication (604). For example, an application element manager maymonitor the value of the SLA parameter, through respectiveinstrumentation, and inform the virtual machine element manager of theSLA parameter. The application may define its SLA goal as 100transactions per second, in which case the SLA parameter of interest istransaction-rate. In general, because SLA parameters can be assumed toincrease monotonically with the amount of resources allocated to anapplication, the management of SLAs may be accomplished as describedherein by finding a budget and a respective resource allocation thatwill accomplish the target SLA value.

The virtual machine element manager determines whether the SLA parameterof interest is below a desired target (606), in which case, for example,the application's payments to the virtual machine (e.g., of virtualcurrency units) are increased such that the virtual machine's budget isincreased, and it is able to purchase more resources to increase the SLAparameter of the application (608). After such an increase, the virtualmachine's budget use is again monitored and optimized or improved asdescribed above.

If the virtual machine element manager determines that the SLA parameteris at or above the desired target, it is determined whether the SLAparameter exceeds the desired target by more than an acceptablethreshold (610), in which case the payments to the virtual manager arereduced, thus reducing the virtual machine's budget and the resources itbuys, saving on applications costs, and keeping the SLA performancewithin a desired tolerance range (612). After such a reduction, thevirtual machine's budget use is again monitored and optimized orimproved as described above. If the SLA parameter is within theacceptable range, however, a reduction is not applied, and the processis repeated until it is determined that the consumer service period hasbeen completed or terminated.

It will be understood that the SLA-delivery process 600 described abovemay be flexibly adapted to achieve various goals, such as improving itshandling of stochastic fluctuations of an SLA parameter. For example,the steps of increasing (608) and decreasing (612) payments by theapplication to the virtual machine may use standard mechanisms ofStochastic Approximation theory, including the Robbins-Monro orKiefer-Wolfowitz algorithms, to regulate the changes in payments toassure convergence. Such a design may be implemented, for example, toachieve more desirable results in connection with non-monotonic SLAparameters. For example, an embodiment using a Robbins-Monro proceduremay replace steps 606-612 with the following iteration:R(n+1)←R(n)+a(n)[SLATarget−SLAParameter(R(n))]where n is a counter of the iterations, R(n) is a vector describing theresource bundle allocated after n iterations, SLATarget is the desiredvalue of the SLAParameter, and SLAParameter(R(n)) is the observed valueof the SLAParameter after n iterations. The vector a(n) represents theincrease/decrease of resources through the n-th step of the iteration;typically a(n)=a/n, where a is a fixed bundle.

Although SLA-delivery process 600 described above uses an economic modeland virtual currency units to control SLA levels, other manners ofcontrolling SLA levels may be used according to various embodiments. Forexample, the allocation of resources to a virtual machine, or to anapplication, may be independent of any economic budget or transfer ofvirtual currency units, and may instead be based on other measures of anapplication's or virtual machine's importance.

The process 500 described above may also be modified or extendedaccording to various other embodiments. For example, since currenthypervisors are not readily adaptable to handling the management ofstorage I/O through HBA or storage systems schedulers, as an alternativeto an arbitrary first-come-first-serve process, process 500 describedabove may be modified or extended as shown in FIG. 7 to facilitate thehandling of storage I/O.

FIG. 7 is a flow diagram of an example process 700 for economic-basedI/O scheduling in a virtualization system, which includes many of thesteps of process 500 shown in FIG. 5 and discussed above. Although notrequired, for the purpose of simplifying the following description, itis assumed that the consumer is a virtual machine, the provider is aserver, and the resource is storage I/O.

Following the deployment of the virtual machine at a server (508), theserver element manager monitors storage I/O usage by one or more virtualmachines, such as by collecting data from one or more of the hypervisor,the guest operating systems of the virtual machines, and the HBAs (702).According to various embodiments, the server element manager may beconfigured to prevent congestion along storage I/O pathways, as mightoccur in cases of usage levels approaching the capacity limits. Forexample, the server element manager may prevent congestion by usingpricing functions as described below that increase prices dramaticallywhen utilization approaches 50% of the capacity.

The server element manager optimizes or improves the resources allocatedto virtual machines, as described above (516), such that virtualmachines acquire a share of the storage I/O resources that iscommensurate with and optimally reflects their budget. The serverelement manager then periodically estimates both the average storage I/Ocapacity used and the average available I/O capacity, and updates therespective attributes of the storage I/O objects in the above-describedsupply chain model databases 246 with this usage data (704). It is notedthat the usage data reported to the supply chain model databases 246will impact price computations, with excessive utilization of storageI/O capacity resulting in respective price increases, and higher pricesin turn deflecting demand by new or existing virtual machines to serverswith lower utilization (and prices) of storage I/O. For example, pricecompetition over using storage I/O resources may result in migration oflow budget virtual machines from overloaded servers to other serverswhere storage I/O resources are more highly available, and are thuspriced lower. Higher priority virtual machines, on the other hand, mayuse their higher budgets or credit to obtain a preferential share ofstorage I/O resources.

The server element manager also computes the actual (versus projected)costs expended by each virtual machine, and applies these prices tohandle its current commitments to virtual machines (706). For example,higher usage of storage I/O results in higher prices and immediate costsassigned to virtual machines, such that virtual machines of lowerpriority and high storage use requirements may quickly exhaust theirbudget or credit and be suspended or terminated, as described below. Inthis manner, the low priority virtual machines relinquish storage I/Ocapacity to virtual machines having a higher priority and thus higherbudget.

Based on the computed costs, the server element manager evaluateswhether the virtual machine's budget is sufficient to pay the cost(708). If it is, the service period of the virtual machine continuesuntil it ends, and the server element manager notifies the virtualmachine element manager of the completion of the service period (518).

Otherwise, if the virtual machine's budget is not sufficient, the serverelement manager evaluates whether the virtual machine's credit (costsminus budget) exceeds an acceptable credit threshold (710). According tovarious embodiments, high priority virtual machines may have higherbudgets and credits and can thus afford to overpay the server elementmanager to guarantee that they do not run out of storage I/O resources.If it is determined that the virtual machine's credit excepts thethreshold, the virtual machine element manager initiates a credit checkprocess to decide whether the virtual machine can increase its budget orsufficiently lower its service demands, and thus continue to run (712).If possible, the virtual machine makes any necessary adjustments (suchas a budget increase in the case of high priority virtual machines, orreduced service demands) and continues to run (714), until the serviceperiod has ended and the server element manager has notified the virtualmachine manager of the termination of the service period as describedabove. Otherwise, the server element manager suspends or terminates thevirtual machine execution and notifies the virtual machine elementmanager, which becomes responsible for addressing the suspension ortermination (716).

Upon termination of the service period and notification to the virtualmachine element manager, the server element manager reports usage datato the virtual machine element manager and settles any credit,overpayments or underpayments with the virtual machine element manager(718). The virtual machine element manager may then proceed to shop fora new server offering lowest cost services to meet the virtual machine'sneeds (520), as explained above.

The economic-based scheduling process 700 described above may be usedeffectively to de-correlate peaks of competing, bursty I/O flows. Forexample, consider the scenario of four virtual machines sharing a commonserver and a 4 Mbps Fiber Channel HBA, where the virtual machinesgenerate average storage I/O flows of 250 Mbps, 250 Mbps, 200 Mbps and300 Mbps, respectively. The aggregate demand average of 1 Gbps consumesonly 25% of the HBA capacity. A resource scheduler may limit itsconsideration to only the average demand which, in this case, would bemanageable by the HBA and SAN. However, consider an alternate scenariowhere the I/O traffic streams are bursty, with a peak/average ratio offive for each virtual machine. If the four I/O streams associated withthe virtual machines are uncorrelated, their peaks will be likelydispersed and the peak of the aggregate stream will generally be lessthan 2 Gbps, which can be handled by the HBA and SAN with negligible orrelatively few queuing delays. However, if the I/O streams arecorrelated, their peaks may be compounded to generate, for example, upto 5 Gbps peaks, utilizing 125% of the capacity and generatingsustainable congestion, delays and losses. The scheduling process 700described above reduces the likelihood of compounded peaks, since theyresult in peak prices and a corresponding depletion of budgets andcredits of low budget virtual machines, leading to suspension,termination or migration of such virtual machines to servers with lowerstorage I/O prices until they find servers where their peaks aresufficiently de-correlated from other virtual machines.

Thus, the allocation of virtual machines to common servers according toscheduling process 700 may result in substantially de-correlated peaksand substantially reduce the peak/average ratio seen by servers. Forexample, consider the example of four virtual machines above. If theirpeaks are uncorrelated, the peaks of the aggregate stream will generallyrequire at most 1.5 Gbps (the peak of the largest component stream),while their average traffic is 1 Gbps. The burstiness ratio(peak/average) of the aggregate stream 1.5/1=1.5 therefore representsonly 30% of the burstiness of the individual streams (1.5 divided by 5).The economic-based scheduling process 700 described above substantiallyreduces interference not only between traffic averages, but it alsoreduces the interference between correlated traffic peaks. This resultsin smoother, less bursty, aggregate workloads, which may permit moreefficient processing.

The order of steps described above with respect to scheduling process700 is illustrative only, and can be done in different orders. Moreover,the aforementioned beneficial effects are true not only for I/O streams,but for workloads sharing other resources as well.

The contracting of services between a consumer and a provider, asdescribed in the example processes above, may include the use of astandard request-response protocol (such as SOAP) to submit a purchaseorder to the provider and transfer a respective payment. In response,the provider may deploy the service requested by the consumer andrespond with a service confirmation.

FIG. 8A is an example purchase order data structure 800 issued by aconsumer element manager for use in purchasing services from a providerelement manager. The first two fields of the data structure 800,source-ID field 802 and provider-ID field 804, respectively identify thesource consumer and destination provider. The third field,transaction-ID field 806, identifies the particular purchase order. Thefourth field of the data structure 800, service field 808, identifiesthe service and provides parameters to quantify the purchase. The fifthfield of the data structure 800, payment field 810, provides paymentdata including payment amount and authentication data to establish thevalidity of the payment. Finally, the sixth field of the data structure800, authentication field 812, provides data to authenticate thevalidity of the purchase order transaction.

FIG. 8B is an example service confirmation data structure 850 issued bythe provider element manager for use in confirming or rejecting thepurchase of services by the consumer element manager. The first threefields of the data structure 850, source-ID field 852, provider-ID field854 and transaction-ID field 856, correspond to the first three fieldsof the data structure 800 described above. The fourth field of the datastructure 850, service confirmation field 858, includes data to confirmthe service and enable the source to access it. Alternatively, assumingthe provider has rejected the transaction, the service confirmationfield 858 would include data with the reason or reasons for rejection,such as insufficient resources or a price change. Finally, the fifthfield of the data structure 850, authentication field 860, provides datato authenticate the validity of the service confirmation.

As described below, various embodiments may also be used to address theproblems of virtual machine sprawling and energy consumption invirtualization systems using supply chain economics. Regardingsprawling, as explained in greater detail below, these embodiments maybe used to suspend or terminate virtual machines that are no longerneeded or productive. These embodiments may also be used to terminatevirtual machines, or to disallow their re-activation if in a standbystate, that are determined to be inconsistent with the current versionsof their guest operating system and applications. Regarding energyconsumption, these embodiments may be used to consolidate and shiftvirtual machines into fewer servers, for example, while still providingdesired SLA performance, and switching other unused or non-productiveservers OFF or into standby mode to reduce energy use. The supply chainsoftware model and processes described above provide mechanisms andmetrics to quantify how productive or non-productive a service elementis. The following description details an example process 900, shown inFIG. 9, for managing the states of virtualization system elements, whichas explained further below, may be used to address sprawling and energyconsumption issues. For simplicity, the following description assumesthat the system element is a virtual machine, although the generalprinciples that follow may be readily adapted for any type of systemelement.

A virtual machine is first initialized, for example, through the use ofan initialize signal generated by a management station (902). Similarly,for example, an application element may interpret events generated by alaunch as an initialize signal.

After being initialized, the virtual machine attempts to obtain aninitial budget to acquire resources for its operations (904). It is nextdetermined whether the virtual machine was successful in obtaining aninitial budget (906), in which case it tries to acquire the resourcesneeded to launch a respective service component (908). Otherwise, itbegins the termination procedure by releasing any resources allocated toit (910).

If the virtual machine is successful at acquiring resources (912), it isprovisioned, deployed, and remains in an active state (914) until itreceives a signal to switch the service element OFF to an idle orstandby state (916). After the terminate signal has been received, thevirtual machine begins the termination procedure by releasing resourcesallocated to it, as described above.

On the other hand, if the virtual machine is not successful at acquiringresources, it will wait an amount of time for sufficient resources tobecome available before attempting to acquire resources again (918). Forexample, during this waiting period, the virtual machine may use anexponential “backoff” mechanism, whereby it repeats its attempts toacquire resources, but doubles the waiting period between repetitionswith every failure. If it is determined that the virtual machine shouldcontinue to try to acquire resources (920), it will do so as describedabove. Otherwise, for example, if failures persist beyond some timeoutperiod, the virtual machine abandons attempts to launch and begins toterminate.

Once resources have been released, it is determined whether the virtualmachine should remain in a standby state (922), in which case theexecution of the virtual machine stops, but it remains in a suspended orstandby state and retains sufficient state data, for example, by usingstorage services to retain state data in image form, and for which thevirtual machine may be required to pay (924). Otherwise, the virtualmachine terminates execution and may be deleted (926).

According to various embodiments, the applications being executed by thevirtual machine are first terminated, and the guest operating system ofthe virtual machine is then terminated, prior to such termination of thevirtual machine. Such a graceful termination may be pursued through arecursive termination of the supply chain elements supported by thevirtual machine. For example, a virtual machine element manager mayissue a terminate signal to a corresponding operating system manager,which propagates the signal to an application manager, which in turnsignals termination to is application. The application may then beginthe termination steps as described above with respect to process 900,after which a termination complete signal to the application manager,and is forwarded to the operating system manager, which in turn sends aterminate signal and receives a termination complete signal back fromthe operating system. Finally, the operating system's terminationcomplete signal may be forwarded to the virtual machine manage, whichcan signal the virtual machine to terminate. It will be understood thatterminating (or even suspending) a virtual machine operations may resultin damages if conducted improperly or at an inappropriate time. Thus,according to various embodiments, a notification procedure may beinvoked to notify administrators of pending terminations or suspensions,such that termination or suspension may only be completed onceadministrator permission has been received.

For a virtual machine in standby state, it is determined whethertermination should follow (such as by receipt of a terminate signal)(928), in which case the virtual machine terminates execution asdescribed above. Otherwise, for example, if it is determined that thevirtual machine should re-activate, the virtual machine seeks to obtaina budget to acquire resources for its operations as described above, forexample, upon receiving an initialize signal. It will be understood thatthe specific actions described above in connection with process 900 maybe modified for non-virtual machine system elements, and that the orderof steps in process 900 are also illustrative only.

According to various embodiments, a process such as process 900described above may be used to control virtual machine sprawling bysuspending or terminating non-productive system elements, such asvirtual machines. For example, consider the ROI of a virtual machine,which measures the relationship between the payments it collects fromapplications and the prices it pays for underlying server and I/Oresources. If the virtual machine's ROI is greater than one, the virtualmachine is earning more than it expends, and the virtual machine may beclassified as being productive in creating applications value thatexceeds the costs of the infrastructures it uses. However, if thevirtual machine's ROI is less than one, this means that the virtualmachine produces less value than the cost of resources it consumes, andthe virtual machine may thus be classified as non-productive. In thismanner, ROI is one example of a metric of productivity that may be usedin determining whether a system element should be suspended orterminated, or whether it should remain active.

A process such as process 900 described above may be used to assure, forexample, that applications' budgets are sufficient to keep one or morevirtual machines' ROI greater than one, and to notify applications'administrators (element managers) as needed when budgets are low. It theROI of one or more virtual machines remains less than one for more thana threshold period, for example, it may indicate that an application'sbudget is too low to sustain productive operation, and that thecorresponding, non-productive virtual machine should be suspended orterminated. For example, a virtual machine may receive a terminatesignal to switch it OFF to an idle or standby state (per step 916 ofprocess 900 described above) as soon as the virtual machine'sproductivity level or score (for example, measured by its ROI) has beendetermined to be less than one for a predetermined time period.Additionally, for example, the length of time that the virtual machine'sROI has been less than one may be a factor in deciding whether thevirtual machine should be terminated, or only suspended for the timebeing.

Similarly to dealing with the sprawling issue, process 900 describedabove and similar processes may also be used for energy management. Forexample, such processes may be used to suspend or terminate (switch OFF)servers that are classified as being non-productive, as in the casewhere a server's ROI is less than one for a sufficiently long period oftime. In this case, the server element manager, much like the case ofthe virtual machine manager described above, can monitor the ROI anddetect termination or suspension conditions. The server manager may thenpursue a termination process, similar to the recursive terminationprocess described above, where all virtual machines on the server arefirst terminated, or moved to another server, before the server managersuspends the server into Standby state (so as to consume less energy andcooling resources, for example) or switches the server OFF.

According to various embodiments, process 900 and similar processes mayalso be used to assure consistency of a suspended virtual machine withchanges in its guest operating system or applications software. Forexample, the virtual machine manager may prevent such inconsistencies bysending a terminate signal, as described above, to all virtual machineswhenever their respective operating system or applications software haschanged, thus causing the applicable virtual machines to transition fromstandby to terminate state, at which point it may be deleted.

Although the above descriptions consider a single-domain virtualizationenvironment, it will be understood that the principles described hereinmay also be applied to multi-domain environments. For example, FIG. 10is a block diagram of an example multi-domain software systemenvironment 1000 for managing virtualized resources in “multi-cloud”systems. Virtualization environment 1000 includes two example softwaresystems 1002 and 1004, each of which is similar to the more detailedexample software system 200 shown in FIG. 2, and which operate in afirst and second domain, respectively.

As shown, software system 1002 operating in the first domain includesuser interface subsystem 1006 and one or more functional managers 1008and 1010. Together, these elements make up the functional managementlayer 1012 of software system 1002, and provide specific managementapplications as described above in connection with FIG. 2.

Software system 1002 also includes one or more element managers 1014 and1016, which monitor and control one or more respective virtualizationstack elements 1018 and 1020. Software system 1002 also includes one ormore databases 1022 (such as the supply chain databases and operationsdatabases described above), as well as a platform manager 1024.Together, these elements make up with platform layer 1026 of softwaresystem 1002, and provide the infrastructures to monitor thevirtualization stack elements 1018 and 1020, model these elements aspart of a supply chain economy, and control their operations, asdescribed above.

Software system 1004 operating in the second domain includes similarelements as software system 1002, and also includes a proxy manager1030. According to various embodiments, this second domain softwaresystem 1004 exports one or more resources or services to first domainsoftware system 1002 by using the proxy manager 1030. The proxy manager1030 exports instrumentation to monitor and control these providedresources to one or more of the element managers 1014 and 1016, such asvirtual machine element managers, of the first domain software system1002. The first domain software system 1002 may view the second domainsoftware system 1004 as a service element integral with its supply chainmodel.

According to various embodiments, the second domain software system 1004is in complete control of the resources (or services) and capabilitiesexported to the first domain software system 1002. For example, softwaresystem 1004 may be an external cloud provider exporting raw serverservices to software system 1002. In this case, software system 1002 canaccess these services, using its local element managers 1014 and 1016,to allocate, for example, CPU, memory and storage resources at thesecond domain software system 1004 and then monitor and control theiruse and operations.

Moreover, according to various embodiments, software systems 1002 and1004 are separately owned and/or managed. For example, software system1002 may be owned and operated by a small business that experiencessteady computing needs except for two hours in each day, during whichtime its computing needs are consistently elevated. In this case, ratherthan purchasing permanent computing resources to handle the two hours ofelevated needs per day, for example, software system 1002 may lease orpurchase additional computing resources from software system 1004 (e.g.,owned by Amazon.com, Inc.) on an as-needed basis. It is noted that,according to various embodiments, even if needed computing resources areavailable from within software system 1002, such resources may bepurchased from software system 1004 based on relative price offerings.

The asymmetric relationship between software systems 1002 and 1004 shownin FIG. 10 and described above may be extended to provide full symmetry.In that case, the first domain software system 1002 would incorporateits own proxy manager (not shown) to export services to the seconddomain software system 1004, which would integrate it within its supplychain through one or more of its respective element managers.

The use of supply chain economic principles and other principlesexplained above serve several purposes and provide several potentialbenefits, both expressly numerated and otherwise. For example, theseprinciples can be used to provide a common software framework andabstractions to unify and automate the management of virtualizationsystems. More specifically, they can be used to optimize or improve theallocation of IT resources (such as I/O resources or software licenses)to best process applications workloads according to their businessvalue. The principles of supply chain economics can also be used tobalance workloads to minimize disruptive operating conditions, such asI/O congestion, and to reduce resource waste by terminating orswitching-off underutilized resources. These principles can also be usedto empower business units to monitor and control the delivery of SLAs totheir applications, as well as the ROI of individual elements and theoverall virtualization system. In addition, for example, theseprinciples can be used to handle the management of virtual resources ina multi-cloud (or multi-domain) system.

Embodiments of the subject matter and the functional operationsdescribed in this specification can be implemented in digital electroniccircuitry, or in computer software, firmware, or hardware, including thestructures disclosed in this specification and their structuralequivalents, or in combinations of one or more of them. Embodiments ofthe subject matter described in this specification can be implemented asone or more computer program products, i.e., one or more modules ofcomputer program instructions encoded on a tangible program carrier forexecution by, or to control the operation of, data processing apparatus.The tangible program carrier can be computer readable medium, such as amachine-readable storage device, a machine-readable storage substrate, amemory device, or a combination of one or more of them.

The terms “data processing apparatus” “data processor”, or “processingdevice” encompasses all apparatus, devices, and machines for processingdata, including by way of example a programmable processor, a computer,or multiple processors or computers. The apparatus can include, inaddition to hardware, code that creates an execution environment for thecomputer program in question, e.g., code that constitutes processorfirmware, a protocol stack, a database management system, an operatingsystem, or a combination of one or more of them.

A computer program (also known as a program, software, softwareapplication, script, or code) can be written in any form of programminglanguage, including compiled or interpreted languages, or declarative orprocedural languages, and it can be deployed in any form, including as astand alone program or as a module, component, subroutine, or other unitsuitable for use in a computing environment. A computer program does notnecessarily correspond to a file in a file system. A program can bestored in a portion of a file that holds other programs or data (e.g.,one or more scripts stored in a markup language document), in a singlefile dedicated to the program in question, or in multiple coordinatedfiles (e.g., files that store one or more modules, sub programs, orportions of code). A computer program can be deployed to be executed onone computer or on multiple computers that are located at one site ordistributed across multiple sites and interconnected by a communicationnetwork.

The processes and logic flows described in this specification can beperformed by one or more programmable processors executing one or morecomputer programs to perform functions by operating on input data andgenerating output. The processes and logic flows can also be performedby, and apparatus can also be implemented as, special purpose logiccircuitry, e.g., an FPGA (field programmable gate array) or an ASIC(application specific integrated circuit).

Processors suitable for the execution of a computer program include, byway of example, both general and special purpose microprocessors, andany one or more processors of any kind of digital computer. Generally, aprocessor will receive instructions and data from a read only memory ora random access memory or both. The essential elements of a computer area processor for performing instructions and one or more memory devicesfor storing instructions and data. Generally, a computer will alsoinclude, or be operatively coupled to receive data from or transfer datato, or both, one or more mass storage devices for storing data, e.g.,magnetic, magneto optical disks, or optical disks. However, a computerneed not have such devices. Moreover, a computer can be embedded inanother device, e.g., a mobile telephone, a personal digital assistant(PDA), a mobile audio or video player, a game console, a GlobalPositioning System (GPS) receiver, to name just a few.

Computer readable media suitable for storing computer programinstructions and data include all forms of non volatile memory, mediaand memory devices, including by way of example semiconductor memorydevices, e.g., EPROM, EEPROM, and flash memory devices; magnetic disks,e.g., internal hard disks or removable disks; magneto optical disks; andCD ROM and DVD-ROM disks. The processor and the memory can besupplemented by, or incorporated in, special purpose logic circuitry.

To provide for interaction with a user, embodiments of the subjectmatter described in this specification can be implemented on a computerhaving a display device, e.g., a CRT (cathode ray tube) or LCD (liquidcrystal display) monitor, for displaying information to the user and akeyboard and a pointing device, e.g., a mouse or a trackball, by whichthe user can provide input to the computer. Other kinds of devices canbe used to provide for interaction with a user as well; for example,feedback provided to the user can be any form of sensory feedback, e.g.,visual feedback, auditory feedback, or tactile feedback; and input fromthe user can be received in any form, including acoustic, speech, ortactile input.

Embodiments of the subject matter described in this specification can beimplemented in a computing system that includes a back end component,e.g., as a data server, or that includes a middleware component, e.g.,an application server, or that includes a front end component, e.g., aclient computer having a graphical user interface or a Web browserthrough which a user can interact with an implementation of the subjectmatter described is this specification, or any combination of one ormore such back end, middleware, or front end components. The componentsof the system can be interconnected by any form or medium of digitaldata communication, e.g., a communication network. Examples ofcommunication networks include a LAN and a wide area network (“WAN”),e.g., the Internet.

While this specification contains many specific implementation details,these should not be construed as limitations on the scope of anyinvention or of what may be claimed, but rather as descriptions offeatures that may be specific to particular embodiments of particularinventions. Certain features that are described in this specification inthe context of separate embodiments can also be implemented incombination in a single embodiment. Conversely, various features thatare described in the context of a single embodiment can also beimplemented in multiple embodiments separately or in any suitablesubcombination. Moreover, although features may be described above asacting in certain combinations and even initially claimed as such, oneor more features from a claimed combination can in some cases be excisedfrom the combination, and the claimed combination may be directed to asubcombination or variation of a subcombination.

Similarly, while operations are depicted in the drawings in a particularorder, this should not be understood as requiring that such operationsbe performed in the particular order shown or in sequential order, orthat all illustrated operations be performed, to achieve desirableresults. In certain circumstances, multitasking and parallel processingmay be advantageous. Moreover, the separation of various systemcomponents in the embodiments described above should not be understoodas requiring such separation in all embodiments, and it should beunderstood that the described program components and systems cangenerally be integrated together in a single software product orpackaged into multiple software products.

Particular embodiments of the subject matter described in thisspecification have been described. Other embodiments are within thescope of the following claims. For example, the actions recited in theclaims can be performed in a different order and still achieve desirableresults. As one example, the processes depicted in the accompanyingfigures do not necessarily require the particular order shown, orsequential order, to achieve desirable results. In certainimplementations, multitasking and parallel processing may beadvantageous.

What is claimed is:
 1. A computer-implemented method, comprising:allocating a computer resource bundle to an application running on avirtual machine in a virtualization system, wherein the virtual machineis a software implementation of a computer that runs at least one guestoperating system and executes one or more programs or applications onthe guest operating system; receiving, from a user, a target servicelevel agreement parameter level; determining, by an application elementmanager running on a data processor in the virtualization system, aservice level agreement parameter level for the application based on theallocated computer resource bundle, wherein the determined parameterlevel represents a performance level of the application and iscorrelated to at least one of the transaction rate of the application,the completion time or delay of the application, and the number oftransactions performed by the application; comparing the determinedservice level agreement parameter level for the application to thetarget service level agreement parameter level; automatically modifyingthe allocation of computer resources to the application depending onwhether the identified service level agreement parameter level for theapplication is below or above the target service level agreementparameter level, wherein the automatically modifying is based at leastin part on the monitoring of stochastic fluctuations; and repeating thedetermining, comparing and automatically modifying steps at least oncebefore the operation of the application in the virtualization system issuspended or terminated.
 2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1,further comprising maintaining a budget, in virtual currency units, forthe application, wherein the allocation of computer resources to theapplication is based on payment of virtual currency units by theapplication according to a determined price for the allocation ofcomputer resources.
 3. The computer-implemented method of claim 2,further comprising converting the paid virtual currency units togovernment issued monetary currency based on a predetermined exchangerate.
 4. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein thedetermined price for the allocation of computer resources to theapplication is based at least in part on one or more auction bids forpurchase of the computer resources.
 5. The computer-implemented methodof claim 2, further comprising automatically adjusting the budget forthe application based on the comparison of the determined service levelagreement parameter level for the application to a threshold servicelevel agreement parameter level.
 6. The computer-implemented method ofclaim 2, further comprising automatically adjusting the payment ofvirtual currency units to a virtual machine on which the application isrunning based on the comparison of the determined service levelagreement parameter level for the application to a threshold servicelevel agreement parameter level.
 7. The computer-implemented method ofclaim 6, further comprising automatically adjusting the payment ofvirtual currency units to a computer server by the virtual machine basedon the comparison of the determined service level agreement parameterlevel for the application to a threshold service level agreementparameter level.
 8. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, whereinthe computer resource bundle includes at least one of an allotment ofcomputer memory, an allotment of program execution scheduling for one ormore central processing units, an allotment of storage interfacebandwidth, an allotment of network interface bandwidth, and an allotmentof a storage array.
 9. The computer-implemented method of claim 1,wherein the application is operating in a first virtualization system,and wherein the computer resources allocated to the application areobtained from a second virtualization system.
 10. A system for managingcomputer resources, comprising: a virtualization system comprising anapplication running on a virtual machine; and instructions stored on acomputer readable medium in the first virtualization system andexecutable by a data processing apparatus to cause the data processingapparatus to perform operations comprising: allocating a computerresource bundle to the application operating in the virtualizationsystem, wherein the virtual machine is a software implementation of acomputer that runs at least one guest operating system and executes oneor more programs or applications on the guest operating system;receiving, from a user, a target service level agreement parameterlevel; determining, by an application element manager, a service levelagreement parameter level for the application based on the allocatedcomputer resource bundle, wherein the determined parameter levelrepresents a performance level of the application and is correlated toat least one of the transaction rate of the application, the completiontime or delay of the application, and the number of transactionsperformed by the application; comparing the determined service levelagreement parameter level for the application to the target servicelevel agreement parameter level; automatically modifying the allocationof computer resources to the application depending on whether theidentified service level agreement parameter level for the applicationis below or above the target service level agreement parameter level,wherein the automatically modifying is based at least in part on themonitoring of stochastic fluctuations; and repeating the determining,comparing and automatically modifying steps at least once before theoperation of the application in the virtualization system is suspendedor terminated.
 11. The computer-implemented method of claim 10, furthercomprising maintaining a budget, in virtual currency units, for theapplication, wherein the allocation of computer resources to theapplication is based on payment of virtual currency units by theapplication according to a determined price for the allocation ofcomputer resources.
 12. The computer-implemented method of claim 11,further comprising converting the paid virtual currency units togovernment issued monetary currency based on a predetermined exchangerate.
 13. The computer-implemented method of claim 11, furthercomprising automatically adjusting the budget for the application basedon the comparison of the determined service level agreement parameterlevel for the application to a threshold service level agreementparameter level.
 14. The computer-implemented method of claim 10,wherein the computer resource bundle includes at least one of anallotment of computer memory, an allotment of program executionscheduling for one or more central processing units, an allotment ofstorage interface bandwidth, an allotment of network interfacebandwidth, and an allotment of a storage array.
 15. Thecomputer-implemented method of claim 10, wherein the application isoperating in a first virtualization system, and wherein the computerresources allocated to the application are obtained from a secondvirtualization system.
 16. A computer-implemented method, comprising:purchasing a computer resource bundle, using virtual currency units, foran application running on a virtual machine in a virtualization system,wherein the virtual machine is a software implementation of a computerthat runs at least one guest operating system and executes one or moreprograms or applications on the guest operating system; allocating thepurchased computer resource bundle to the application; receiving, from auser, a target service level agreement parameter level; determining, byan element manager running on a data processor in the virtualizationsystem, a service level agreement parameter level for the application,wherein the determined parameter level represents a performance level ofthe application and is correlated to at least one of the transactionrate of the application, the completion time or delay of theapplication, and the number of transactions performed by theapplication; automatically modifying the purchase of the computerresource bundle based at least in part on a comparison of the determinedservice level agreement parameter level to the target service levelagreement parameter level, wherein the automatically modifying is basedat least in part on the monitoring of stochastic fluctuations; andrepeating the determining, comparing and automatically modifying stepsat least once before the operation of the application in thevirtualization system is suspended or terminated.
 17. Thecomputer-implemented method of claim 16, wherein the automaticallymodifying the purchase of the computer resource bundle is based at leastin part on a stochastic approximation algorithm.